Blast From The Past: 1979 Chrysler ETV-1 (videos)

Recently, the folks over at Gas2.0 dug out some interesting old Department of Energy footage pertaining to a “New Beginning” for electric cars – circa 1976, focusing on the Chrysler ETV-1, that we figured we would pass along.

Chrysler ETV-1: “The first electric test vehicle developed for US Department of Energy’s Near Term Electric Vehicle program. It is the result of two years of hard work. Two years of bringing together the best ideas of a dedicated team of scientists and engineers”

The challenge: to build suitable car for “mass production in the mid-80s”.

As we know today, this program was wildly successful and lead to the complete domination of plug-in cars that we all enjoy driving today over the traditional internal combustion products of the 70s.

Or rather, the lone prototype – a 1979 model, ended up recently being sold off on ebay (as outlined in this Autoblog story) for $3,500 and the world had to wait another 30-odd years for EVs to become a reality.

You are absolutely right about their willingness. Today’s EV’s have about the same range as an electric car prototype built the year I was born. It just goes to show they could do so much more considering engineering and battery technology has come pretty far in the last 40 years. As a side note, it seems that the design was kept by Chrysler to be used as a Dodge Dayton some years later 😉

You mean Chrysler with the ETV-1 in 1979, almost two decades before the GM EV1. GM basically just took back where Chrysler left it many years before. If NiMH batteries didn’t show up as a true enabler it would have been a mere me to product. The more, once GM saw those new batteries could make it real they saw ev as a treat to their standard cars and canceled it at once instead of further developing them. GM did nothing but stand in way. Even worse they give false hope to the specialist involved that subsequently saw their efforts being crashed literally. GM retarded the ev and they would still be golf cars if it Hadn’t been for the emergence of Prius modification kits to make the Prius plug-ins with extra batteries. Those eventually evolved to Lithium ions giving ever longer range. This attracted the attention of Martin Eberhard that subsequently equipped a TZero with Lithium battery. It was then the demonstration of the exceptional capabilities of that car that started the onset of the roadster and Tesla.
Later GM came back to ev in the form of the Volt but only as the condition set by the government to be saved from bankruptcy and later as condition of the bail out. Today GM still acts only in reaction, this time due to Tesla, Nissan and some others. GM has never been truly committed to ev.

“if it Hadn’t been for the emergence of Prius modification kits to make the Prius plug-ins with extra batteries. Those eventually evolved to Lithium ions giving ever longer range. This attracted the attention of Martin Eberhard that subsequently equipped a TZero with Lithium battery. It was then the demonstration of the exceptional capabilities of that car that started the onset of the roadster and Tesla.”

I don’t think this is totally accurate. The regular Prius only played a role in convincing Martin that an EV sports car with a price premium would sell.

In different interviews he does mention the role that the Prius played. He noticed how his neighbor and many others owned what he called “a Porsche and a Prius”. What he meant was that people weren’t buying Prii to save money on gas but had disposable income and wanted to make a statement or do the right thing. This convinced him that there was a market for a fairly pricey sport EV.

The timeline also doesn’t support this idea since AC propulsion had a prototype up and running with Li-ion cells a year before the first Prius conversions existed.

The original tzero was first built in 1997. “Martin Eberhard commissioned a conversion of the original tzero battery pack from lead-lead acid to 6,800 lightweight lithium-ion cells[2][3] similar to those that make up the battery packs of laptop computers. The conversion was done over six months from March through September, 2003 and gave the tzero a 300-mile range”

2004 was when CalCars’ first PRIUS+ prototype and EDrive Systems conversion was demonstrated on a 2004 model year Prius.

There were many other PHEV conversion prototypes being built by others like UC Davis in the previous years.

In 2001 the DOE created the National Center Of Hybrid Excellence at UC Davis, with Dr. Andy Frank as Director. Through this program UC Davis obtained substantial funding from GM to hybridize and build a plug-in EV1.

So there was a lot going on at this time and I’m sure a lot of shared inspiration but it might be a stretch to say that AC propulsion wouldn’t have thought to put Li-ion cells into their tzero without the Prius since they had already been planning to years before but didn’t have the funding until Eberhard and then later Musk came along.

For those of you who might x are about these early historic cars…ETV-1 resides in a climate controlled facility in eastern Pennsylvania along side of the Globe Union Endura car both awaiting a ground up restoration. It’s nice to see people still talk about these pioneering cars.